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Flash in Supermassive Black Hole Aimed at Us

Astronomers have determined the source of an incredibly bright X-ray, optical and radio signal appearing from halfway across the Universe. The signal, named AT 2022cmc, was discovered earlier this year by the Zwicky Transient Facility in California. Findings published in Nature Astronomy, suggest that it is likely from a jet of matter, streaking out from a supermassive black hole at close to the speed of light.

The team, including researchers from MIT and the University of Birmingham, believe the jet is the product of a black hole that suddenly began devouring a nearby star, releasing a huge amount of energy in the process. Their findings could shed new light on how supermassive black holes feed and grow.


Astronomers have observed other such “tidal disruption events,” or TDEs, in which a passing star is torn apart by a black hole’s tidal forces. However AT 2022cmc is brighter than any TDE discovered to date, and is also the farthest TDE ever detected, at some 8.5 billion light years away.


The team measured the distance to the AT 2022cmc using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, in Chile.


Dr Matt Nicholl, associate professor at the University of Birmingham, said: “Our spectrum told us that the source was hot: around 30,000 degrees, which is typical for a TDE. But we also saw some absorption of light by the galaxy where this event occurred. These absorption lines were highly shifted towards redder wavelengths, telling us that this galaxy was much further away than we expected!”


Because AT 2022cmc was so bright and lasted so long, we knew that something truly gargantuan must be powering it – a supermassive black hole, claimed Dr Benjamin Gompertz, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham.


How could such a distant event appear so bright in our sky? The team says the black hole’s jet may be pointing directly toward Earth, making the signal appear brighter than if the jet were pointing in any other direction. The effect is “Doppler boosting,” and is similar to the amped-up sound of a passing siren.


AT 2022cmc is the fourth Doppler-boosted TDE ever detected and the first such event that has been observed since 2011. It is also the first boosted TDE discovered using an optical sky survey. As more powerful telescopes start up in the coming years, they will reveal more TDEs, which can shed light on how supermassive black holes grow and shape the galaxies around them.

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2022/mysteriously-bright-flash-is-a-black-hole-jet-pointing-straight-toward-earth-astronomers-say


AR #71

The Super Collision Threat

by Nancy L. Williams

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Fire for Cooking Food 780,000 Years Ago

A close analysis of the remains of a carp-like fish found at the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov archaeological site in Israel shows that the fish were cooked roughly 780,000 years ago, a collaborative study that included Tel Aviv University (TAU) researchers says. Until now, the earliest evidence of cooking dated to approximately 170,000 years ago. The question of when early man began using fire to cook food has been the subject of much scientific discussion for over a century. These findings shed new light on the matter and were published on November 14, 2022, in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The researchers define “cooking” as the ability to process food by controlling the temperature at which it is heated and includes a wide range of methods. “This study demonstrates the huge importance of fish in the life of prehistoric humans, for their diet and economic stability,” Dr. Zohar and Dr. Prevost say. “Further, by studying the fish remains found at Gesher Benot Ya’aqob, we were able to reconstruct for the first time the fish population of the ancient Hula Lake and to show that the lake held fish species that became extinct over time. These species included giant barbs (carp-like fish) that reached up to two meters in length. The large quantity of fish remains found at the site proves their frequent consumption by early humans, who developed special cooking techniques. These new findings demonstrate not only the importance of freshwater habitats and the fish they contained for the sustenance of prehistoric man, but also illustrate prehistoric humans’ ability to control fire in order to cook food, and their understanding the benefits of cooking fish before eating it.”


Until now, evidence of the use of fire for cooking had been limited to sites that came into use 600,000 years later than the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov site. “The fact that the cooking of fish is evident over such a long and unbroken period of settlement at the site indicates a continuous tradition of cooking food,” Prof. Goren-Inbar says. “This is another in a series of discoveries relating to the high cognitive capabilities of the Acheulian hunter-gatherers who were active in the ancient Hula Valley region. These groups were deeply familiar with their environment and the various resources it offered.  Further, it shows they had extensive knowledge of the life cycles of different plant and animal species. Gaining the skill required to cook food marks a significant evolutionary advance, as it provided an additional means for making optimal use of available food resources. It is even possible that cooking was not limited to fish, but also included various types of animals and plants.”


The team says that exploiting fish in freshwater habitats was the first step on prehistoric humans’ route out of Africa. Early man began to eat fish around 2 million years ago but cooking fish represented a real revolution in the Acheulian diet and is an important foundation for understanding the relationship between man, the environment, climate, and migration when attempting to reconstruct the history of early humans.

https://www.aftau.org/news_item/tau-researchers-among-those-finding-oldest-evidence-of-the-use-of-fire-to-cook-food/

AR #125

Jurassic Soft Tissue”

by Stephen Robbins, Ph.D.

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Tonga Volcano Plume Highest Ever Recorded

Oxford University researchers have shown the devastating Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai eruption in January 2022 created the tallest volcanic plume ever recorded. The new analysis has been published in the journal Science. (https://scitechdaily.com/highest-ever-recorded-volcanic-plume-the-hunga-tonga-hunga-haapai-eruption/)

At 57km high (35 miles), the ash cloud generated by the eruption is also the first to have been observed in the mesosphere, a layer of the atmosphere more commonly associated with shooting stars. The previous record-holder, the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, caused a plume was recorded as 40km high, although accurate satellite images, such as those taken over Tonga, were not available at the time.


The Tonga eruption took place under the sea, around 65km from the country’s main island, causing tsunamis felt as far away as Russia, the United States, and Chile. The waves claimed six lives, including two people in Peru, 10,000km away.


“It’s the first time we’ve ever recorded a volcanic plume reaching the mesosphere. Krakatau in the 1800s might have done as well, but we didn’t see that in enough detail to confirm,” said Dr Simon Proud, a National Center for Earth Observation senior scientist at the University of Oxford and the Science and Technology.


Normally, the height of a volcanic plume can be estimated by measuring the temperature at its top and comparing it to the standard air temperatures found at various altitudes. This is because, in the troposphere, the lowest layer of the Earth’s atmosphere, temperature decreases with height. But, if the eruption is so large the plume penetrates the higher layers of the atmosphere, this method becomes unreliable, as air temperatures begin to increase again with height.


To overcome this problem, the researchers developed a technique based on a phenomenon called ‘the parallax effect’.
This effect can be seen by closing your right eye, and holding out one hand with the thumb raised upwards. If you switch eyes, so your left is closed and your right is open, the thumb will appear to shift slightly against the background. By measuring this apparent change in position, and combining this with the known distance between your eyes, you can calculate the distance between your eyes and your thumb.


The location of the Tonga volcano is covered by three geostationary weather satellites, 36,000km up in space, so the researchers were able to apply the parallax effect to the aerial images these captured. Crucially, during the eruption itself, the satellites recorded images every 10 minutes, enabling the rapid changes in the plume’s trajectory to be documented.


‘Thirty years ago, when Pinatubo erupted, our satellites were nowhere near as good as they are now. They could only scan the earth every 30 minutes. Or maybe even every hour,’ said Dr Proud.
The study, “The January 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano reached the mesosphere” has been published in the journal Science.


The three satellites used to capture and evaluate the eruption were GOES-17 (USA), Himawari-8 (Japan) and GeoKompSat-2A (Korea). The open-access data was processed by the UK’s Jasmin Supercomputer at the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Rutherford Appleton Lab.

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2022-11-04-tonga-volcano-had-highest-plume-ever-recorded-new-study-confirms

AR Issue #42

The Super Volcano Threat

by John Kettler

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The Bible and GeoMagnetism 

A joint study by Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University, has accurately dated 21 destruction layers at 17 archaeological sites in Israel by reconstructing the direction and/or intensity of the earth’s magnetic field recorded in burnt remnants. The new data verify the Biblical accounts of the Egyptian, Aramean, Assyrian, and Babylonian military campaigns against the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

 Findings indicate, for example, that the army of Hazael, King of Aram-Damascus, was responsible for the destruction of several cities – Tel Rehov, Tel Zayit, and Horvat Tevet, in addition to Gath of the Philistines, whose destruction is noted in the Hebrew Bible. At the same time, the study refutes the prevailing theory that Hazael was the conqueror who destroyed Tel Beth-Shean.


Other geomagnetic findings reveal that the cities in the Negev were destroyed by the Edomites, who took advantage of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians.


The groundbreaking interdisciplinary study was published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA) and is based on the doctoral thesis of Yoav Vaknin, supervised by Prof. Erez Ben-Yosef and Prof. Oded Lipschits of TAU’s Nadler Institute of Archaeology and Prof. Ron Shaar from the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University.


 The researchers explain that geophysicists, attempting to understand the mechanism of earth’s magnetic field, track changes in this field throughout history. To this end, they use archaeological findings containing magnetic minerals which, when heated or burned, record the magnetic field at the time of the fire.


Thus, in a 2020 study, researchers reconstructed the magnetic field as it was on the 9th of the month of Av, 586 BCE, the Hebrew date of the destruction of the First Temple and the City of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian army.


Now, using archaeological findings unearthed over several decades at 17 sites throughout Israel, alongside historical information from ancient inscriptions and Biblical accounts, the researchers were able to reconstruct the magnetic fields recorded in 21 destruction layers. They used the data to develop a reliable new scientific tool for archaeological dating.

https://english.tau.ac.il/geomagnetic_fields_israel

AR Issue #119

Did Newton Predict the State of Israel?

by John Chambers

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Why Atlantis Still Matters

By J. Douglas Kenyon

No one in the past century is more directly linked with the notion that Earth’s forgotten history has been punctuated by memory-destroying catastrophic events, than Immanuel Velikovsky.

No one in the past century is more directly linked with the notion that Earth’s forgotten history has been punctuated by memory-destroying catastrophic events, than Immanuel Velikovsky.

When the late Russian/American scientist’s Worlds in Collision was published in 1950 it caused a sensation, and brought down upon the author’s head a virtual firestorm of scorn from the custodians of the natural history establishment. Subsequent books further elaborated his ideas and inflamed the controversy. Here was a scientist of considerable authority suggesting, among other things, that Earth and Venus might once have collided, leaving a vast chaotic aftermath which could have done much to explain our peculiar his‘tory. For such arguments, Velikovsky was, ever afterward, roundly ridiculed. Surprisingly, though, many of his predictions have now been validated, and an entire school of thought, known as ‘Catastrophism,’ has arisen.

This Article is from the new edition of Watkins MIND BODY SPIRIT magazine


Among the claims for which he was ridiculed, but which have since been established as true, are: Venus is still very hot; rich in petroleum and hydrocarbon gases; and has an abnormal orbit. Other, now-verified Velikovsky claims include: Jupiter emits radio noises; Earth’s magnetosphere reaches at least to the Moon; the Sun has an electric potential of approximately 10 to the 19th power in volts; the rotation of the Earth can be affected by electromagnetic fields. Some of Velikovsky’s critics, including the late Carl Sagan, have conceded that he might have been on to something. A practicing psychoanalyst himself, Velikovsky offered unique insight into the psycho/sociological impacts of cataclysmic events. The psychological condition and case history of planet Earth is, he observed, one of ‘amnesia.’

As in the mythic tales of many traditions we, the victims of amnesia, are left with few clues to guide us through a maze of incomprehensible signs and images, while the incoherent fragments of a lost identity—the artifacts of forgotten worlds—haunt our dreams, even as the princes of the darkness, become the tyrants whom we permit to enslave us. Whether in government, orthodox religion, society, academia, or the ‘twitterverse,’ such figures find the light of recovering consciousness, a threat—best stamped out, nipped in the bud, strangled in the cradle, silenced, canceled. Should we be surprised to learn that those dark princes will fight to preserve the perks and prerogatives of their dim domain?


In Ghosts of Atlantis, my new book published by Inner Traditions/Bear & Co. I argue that we live within the ruins of an ancient civilization whose vast size has hitherto rendered it invisible. Remembered in myth as Atlantis, Lemuria, or other lost-world archetypes, the remains of this advanced civilization have lain buried for millennia beneath the deserts and oceans of the world, but leaving us many mysterious and bewildering clues.


Investigating the perennial myth of a forgotten fountainhead of civilization, the book offers extensive physical and spiritual evidence for a lost great culture, and the collective amnesia that wiped it from planetary memory. We explore the countless ways ancient catastrophes still haunt us. We look at the case for advanced ancient technology, study anomalous ancient maps, extraterrestrial influence, time travel, crystal science, and the true age of the Sphinx, evidence in the Bible for Atlantis and ancient Armageddon, Stone Age high-tech at Gobekli Tepe, the truth of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the Zep Tepi monuments of Egypt, mysteries of the Gulf of Cambay, and what lies beneath the ice of Antarctica. We look at extinction events, Earth’s connection with Mars, and how our DNA reveals that humanity has had enough time to evolve civilization, and to lose it, more than once.


Exploring the advanced esoteric and spiritual knowledge of the ancients, our book also shows that the search for Atlantis and other lost worlds is, in fact, a search for the lost soul of humanity. Drawing upon Velikovsky’s notion of a species-wide amnesia brought on by the trauma of losing an entire civilization, the book reveals how the virtual ruins of a lost history are buried deep in our collective unconscious, constantly tugging at our awareness.


The popularity of the movie Titanic, not too many years ago had Hollywood scrambling to clone the formula. The secret of unlimited wealth seemed to be at stake. Most theories of the movie’s success had to do with star power, and special effects combined with a good love story, but could something else have been involved?


Call it an ‘archetype,’ if you will, but the idea of an enormous, technically advanced, and arrogant world—supposedly impervious to danger—yet suddenly destroyed by nature itself and banished to the bottom of the sea, may strike an even deeper chord than most Hollywood moguls would dare to consider.


If it is true that our civilization is, as Plato suggested, but the latest round in an eternal series of heroic ascensions followed by catastrophic falls, it makes sense that we share a deep need to better comprehend our predicament.
Velikovsky offered a compelling explanation for many of the world’s pathologies. The cataclysmic destruction of a society, and its subsequent descent into barbarism, he said, would result in a loss of collective memory and, whatever new order rose from the ashes of the old, the requirements of self-preservation would tend to block the recalling of the former world.


At deeper levels, we all understand somehow, that, before the dawn of recorded history—our collective memory—we once rose to the heights, but still, we then plunged into an abyss from which we have not yet fully emerged.
Like the watery ghosts of the Titanic, we long to be awakened, but we dread it too, and that’s the problem.

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Another Ancient Italian Eruption Discovered

Volcanic eruptions evoke images of lava, fire, and destruction; however, this is not always the case. The Plinian eruption of Mount Vesuvius around 4,000 years ago – 2,000 years before the one that buried the Roman city of Pompeii— left a remarkably intact glimpse into Early Bronze Age village life in the Campania region of Southern Italy.

The village of Afragola was situated near present-day Naples, about 10 miles from Mount Vesuvius. Following the eruption, the village was encased in meters of ash, mud, and alluvial sediments, which lent a surprising degree of protection to the site, a rarity for archaeological sites from this era in Europe. Owing to the level of preservation and the diversity of preserved plants at the site, researchers were interested to see if they could pinpoint the time of year when the eruption occurred.


The village of Afragola was excavated over an area of 5,000 square meters, making it among the most extensively investigated sites of the Early Bronze Age in Italy, with a large group of archaeologists who meticulously carried out the sampling.


The course of the eruption happened in different phases, starting with a dramatic explosion that sent debris traveling primarily to the northeast. This gave the villagers time to flee, which is why the site does not contain human remains as other sites like Pompeii do, but it does contain several footprints of adults and children fleeing the area. Then the direction of the wind changed, bringing a copious amount of ash toward Afragola.


This eruption changed the climate for many years afterward. The column of the Plinian eruption rose to basically the flight altitude of airplanes. The cover of ash was so deep that it left the site untouched for 4,000 years — no one even knew it was there.

https://today.uconn.edu/2022/09/detailing-a-disastrous-autumn-day-in-ancient-italy/#https://today.uconn.edu/2022/09/detailing-a-disastrous-autumn-day-in-ancient-italy/#

AR Issue #43

Is Atlantis Off Cypress?

By Robert Sarmast

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Tomb of St. Nick Found

Archaeologists have announced the discovery of the burial place of St Nicholas in the Church of St. Nicholas, located in Turkey’s Antalya province.

Saint Nicholas was an early Christian bishop of Greek descent from the maritime city of Myra in Asia Minor during the time of the Roman Empire. Saint Nicholas had many miracles attributed to his intercession but is also known for his generous practice of gift-giving which gave rise to the traditional concept of Santa Claus and Sinterklaas.


In one of the earliest attested accounts of his life, he is said to have rescued three girls from being forced into prostitution by dropping a sack of gold coins through their window. Other early stories tell of him calming a storm at sea, saving three innocent soldiers from wrongful execution, and chopping down a tree possessed by a demon. Another famous late legend tells how he resurrected three children, who had been murdered and pickled in brine by a butcher planning to sell them as pork during a famine.


Centuries after his death, the Byzantine Emperor, Theodosius II, ordered the construction of the St. Nicholas Church over the site where Saint Nicholas had served as bishop. His body was exhumed and reburied in the church, but by the 11th century AD, his remains were removed and enshrined as sacred relics in the Basilica di San Nicola located in Bari, Southern Italy. During the First Crusade, Venetian sailors removed most of his remains once again and transported them to Venice, where they were deposited in the San Nicolò al Lido monastery basilica.


In 1953, an inspection of bone fragments from both Bari and Venice determined that they came from the same individual, although authenticity to determine whether they belonged to Saint Nicholas is inconclusive.


According to Osman Eravşar, chairman of the Antalya Cultural Heritage Preservation Regional Board, the tomb and sarcophagus of Saint Nicholas was located at the base of a fresco depicting Jesus, where the team have excavated the original church foundations and period mosaic flooring from the 4th century AD.


New evidence suggests that the ecclesiastical building’s similarity to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem further supports their theory, as both share similar architectural features such as an unfinished dome on top to link St. Nicholas with the story of Jesus’s crucifixion and ascension into the sky.

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2022/10/original-burial-place-of-st-nicholas-located-by-archaeologists/145022

AR Issue #123

Mysterious Gifts of the Saints

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Solving the Ancient Greek Volcano Mystery

By David Nutt

One of the largest volcanic eruptions in the Holocene epoch – as measured by the volume of material ejected – occurred on the Greek island of Santorini, traditionally known as Thera. It is considered a pivotal event in the prehistory of the Aegean and East Mediterranean region, with the city of Akrotiri, buried some 1,600 years before Pompeii, becoming one of the key archaeological sites of the second millennium BCE. That much is uncontested.

Archeologists in the early 20th century posited the volcano erupted around 1500 BCE, during the Egyptian New Kingdom period, and created a history around this assumption. But beginning in the 1970s, advances in radiocarbon dating have thrown that timeline into chaos, with many experts insisting the eruption happened as much as 100-plus years earlier.


Sturt Manning, Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Classical Archaeology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University, is hoping to settle one of modern archaeology’s longstanding disputes. By parsing the available data and combining it with cutting-edge statistical analysis, he has zeroed in on a much narrower range of dates for the eruption: approximately 1609–1560 BCE, during the preceding Second Intermediate Period of Egypt, when the Hyksos – a Canaanite-origin dynasty – controlled Lower Egypt. While not yet a precise date, to the year, for resolving the big-picture question of the correct historical period, the finding clarifies many years of debate.
Manning’s paper, “Second Intermediate Period Date for the Thera (Santorini) Eruption and Historical Implications,” published Sept. 20 in PLOS ONE.


“This has been the single most contested date in Mediterranean history for over 40 years,” said Manning, who directs the Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory. “It’s been one of these endless disputes, to the point where people just say, ‘there’s a problem here, we can’t solve it, let’s move on.’ I’m hoping with this paper people may suddenly go, ‘You know what, this actually limits and defines the problem in a way that we’ve never been able to do before, and narrows it down to where, usefully, we can say it’s in the Second Intermediate Period. So we should start writing a different history.’”

For Manning, the Thera eruption has been like Mount Everest – a challenge that he has wanted to tackle since early in his career. Accurately dating the event has become more feasible in recent years with the increased sophistication of Bayesian statistical analysis, enabling chronological modeling that can integrate massive amounts of data and archaeological observations to better define the probability parameters for an unknown event.


The parameters have been fairly well understood for years, Manning said, thanks to the extensive geological and archaeological research that’s been conducted. The missing piece of the puzzle has been an often-raised concern that volcanic carbon dioxide emissions could have contaminated organic samples from Thera and caused incorrect age assessments.


Last spring, Manning realized he could solve the problem by looking elsewhere – hundreds of kilometers away from Thera – to regions of the Aegean Sea that experienced the tsunami effects caused by the eruption. Manning incorporated dates obtained for these episodes into his model to test for, and discount, the volcanic carbon dioxide caveat. On Thera itself, he also spotted the importance of a short but clearly observed gap in time between the abandonment of the town at Akrotiri and the huge eruption, and he incorporated this previously overlooked constraint into the modeling.


“It’s been observed for years that there is some short interval in the archaeological sequence between when the city of Akrotiri was abandoned by its human population and before its burial under meters of pumice from the eruption. Even though several hectares have been excavated, no human skeletons have been found, so clearly people had warning of impending peril and left. No one’s allowed for that in the past,” Manning said. “By putting that extra qualification in, we tighten the statistical analysis.”


The modeling identified the most likely range of dates for the eruption to be: between about 1609–1560 BCE (95.4% probability), or about 1606–1589 BCE (68.3% probability).


The new timeline synchronizes the civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean while also ruling out several ancillary theories, such as the idea that the Thera eruption was responsible for destroying Minoan palaces on the coast of Crete as the first excavator of Akrotiri, Spyridon Marinatos, proposed in 1939.


“That seems not to be the case,” Manning said. “Because when we date the destruction levels on Crete, they seem to be upwards of a century later.”


Because his analysis pegs the Thera eruption earlier than the original proposed date, but not as early as radiocarbon dating had initially suggested, Manning hopes the new timeline may be more palatable for experts on both sides of the long-running debate.


“This demonstrates, as with so much of science, that people have to make hypotheses based on the initial information, but as you get more and more information and better analysis, you revise and refine,” he said. “In this case, the answer seems to be between the original position and the first radiocarbon indications pointing as much as 100-150 years earlier. Hopefully this new analysis, based on a large dataset and a recent, better-defined radiocarbon calibration curve released in 2020, should be more palatable for the overall archaeological and historical fields. It changes the historical context, but at the same time, is not trying to push things quite so far out of the envelope.”


https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2022/09/statistical-analysis-aims-solve-greek-volcano-mystery

AR Issue #111

The Titans of Baalbek

by Hugh Newman

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Bulls Eye for Planetary Defense Test

After 10 months flying in space, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)—the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration—successfully impacted its asteroid target on Monday (October 3, 2022), the agency’s first attempt to move an asteroid in space.

Mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, announced the successful impact at 7:14 p.m. EDT. 


As a part of NASA’s overall planetary defense strategy, DART’s impact with the asteroid Dimorphos demonstrates a viable mitigation technique for protecting the planet from an Earth-bound asteroid or comet, if one were discovered.


“At its core, DART represents an unprecedented success for planetary defense, but it is also a mission of unity with a real benefit for all humanity,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “As NASA studies the cosmos and our home planet, we’re also working to protect that home, and this international collaboration turned science fiction into science fact, demonstrating one way to protect Earth.”


DART targeted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, a small body just 530 feet (160 meters) in diameter. It orbits a larger, 2,560-foot (780-meter) asteroid called Didymos. Neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth.
The mission’s one-way trip confirmed NASA can successfully navigate a spacecraft to intentionally collide with an asteroid to deflect it, a technique known as kinetic impact.


The investigation team will now observe Dimorphos using ground-based telescopes to confirm that DART’s impact altered the asteroid’s orbit around Didymos. Researchers expect the impact to shorten Dimorphos’ orbit by about 1%, or roughly 10 minutes; precisely measuring how much the asteroid was deflected is one of the primary purposes of the full-scale test.


“Planetary Defense is a globally unifying effort that affects everyone living on Earth,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Now we know we can aim a spacecraft with the precision needed to impact even a small body in space. Just a small change in its speed is all we need to make a significant difference in the path an asteroid travels.”


The spacecraft’s sole instrument, the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO), together with a sophisticated guidance, navigation and control system that works in tandem with Small-body Maneuvering Autonomous Real Time Navigation (SMART Nav) algorithms, enabled DART to identify and distinguish between the two asteroids, targeting the smaller body.


These systems guided the 1,260-pound (570-kilogram) box-shaped spacecraft through the final 56,000 miles (90,000 kilometers) of space into Dimorphos, intentionally crashing into it at roughly 14,000 miles (22,530 kilometers) per hour to slightly slow the asteroid’s orbital speed. DRACO’s final images, obtained by the spacecraft seconds before impact, revealed the surface of Dimorphos in close-up detail.


Fifteen days before impact, DART’s CubeSat companion Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube), provided by the Italian Space Agency, deployed from the spacecraft to capture images of DART’s impact and of the asteroid’s resulting cloud of ejected matter. In tandem with the images returned by DRACO, LICIACube’s images are intended to provide a view of the collision’s effects to help researchers better characterize the effectiveness of kinetic impact in deflecting an asteroid. Because LICIACube doesn’t carry a large antenna, images will be downlinked to Earth one by one in the coming weeks.


“DART’s success provides a significant addition to the essential toolbox we must have to protect Earth from a devastating impact by an asteroid,” said Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer. “This demonstrates we are no longer powerless to prevent this type of natural disaster. Coupled with enhanced capabilities to accelerate finding the remaining hazardous asteroid population by our next Planetary Defense mission, the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor, a DART successor could provide what we need to save the day.”


With the asteroid pair within 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) of Earth, a global team is using dozens of telescopes stationed around the world and in space to observe the asteroid system. Over the coming weeks, they will characterize the ejecta produced and precisely measure Dimorphos’ orbital change to determine how effectively DART deflected the asteroid. The results will help validate and improve scientific computer models critical to predicting the effectiveness of this technique as a reliable method for asteroid deflection.


“This first-of-its-kind mission required incredible preparation and precision, and the team exceeded expectations on all counts,” said APL Director Ralph Semmel. “Beyond the truly exciting success of the technology demonstration, capabilities based on DART could one day be used to change the course of an asteroid to protect our planet and preserve life on Earth as we know it.”


Roughly four years from now, the European Space Agency’s Hera project will conduct detailed surveys of both Dimorphos and Didymos, with a particular focus on the crater left by DART’s collision and a precise measurement of Dimorphos’ mass.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-dart-mission-hits-asteroid-in-first-ever-planetary-defense-test

AR Issue #68

Asteroid Defense Triumphs

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Killing the Dinosaurs: the Mega Volcano Link

The biological history of the Earth has been punctuated by mass extinctions that wiped out a vast majority of living species in a geological instant.

Based on evidence in the fossil record, scientists have identified five such events that reshaped life on Earth, the most familiar of which brought about the demise of the mighty dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous Period 66 million years ago.


What caused these catastrophes remains a matter of keen scientific debate. Some scientists argue that comets or asteroids that crashed into Earth were the most likely agents of mass destruction, while others point fingers at large volcanic eruptions.


Dartmouth Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences Brenhin Keller belongs to the latter camp. In a new study published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Keller and his co-authors make a strong case for volcanic activity being the key driver of mass extinctions. Their study provides the most compelling quantitative evidence so far that the link between major volcanic eruptions and wholesale species turnover is not simply a matter of chance.


Four of the five mass extinctions are contemporaneous with a type of volcano called a flood basalt, the researchers say. These are a series of eruptions (or one giant one) that flood vast areas with lava in the blink of a geological eye, a mere million years. They leave behind giant fingerprints as evidence—extensive regions of step-like, igneous rock that geologists call large igneous provinces.


To count as “large,” an igneous province must contain at least 100,000 cubic kilometers of magma. For scale, the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens involved less than one cubic kilometer of magma.


In fact, a series of eruptions in what is now known as Siberia triggered the most destructive of the mass extinctions about 252 million years ago, releasing a gigantic pulse of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and nearly choking off all life. Bearing witness are the Siberian Traps, a large region of volcanic rock roughly the size of Australia.


Volcanic eruptions also rocked the Indian subcontinent around the time of the great dinosaur die-off, creating what is known today as the Deccan plateau. This, much like an asteroid strike, would have had far-reaching global effects, blanketing the atmosphere in dust and toxic fumes, asphyxiating dinosaurs and other life.


“It seems like these large igneous provinces line up in time with mass extinctions and other significant climatic and environmental events,” says Theodore Green ’21, lead author of the paper.


Theodore Green ’21, left, and Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences Brenhin Keller were authors of the study.


On the other hand, the researchers say, the theories in favor of annihilation by asteroid impact hinge upon the Chicxulub impactor, a space rock that crash-landed into Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula around the same time that the dinosaurs went extinct.

https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2022/09/what-killed-dinosaurs-and-other-life-earth

AR Issue #70

How Old Is The Earth, Really?

By Stephen E. Robbins, Ph.D